Birth May 22, 1935
Rutland, VT
Death Nov. 16, 2024
Colchester, VT
Details of service
A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Shelburne, on Friday, Dec. 20 at 1 p.m. A burial will be held in the spring at the Shelburne Town Cemetery.
Alice Anne (Miglis) Bennett, 89, a Shelburne, Vermont resident since 1977, died in her sleep Saturday, Nov. 15, at the McClure Miller Respite House in Colchester surrounded by her family. She was born in Rutland, Vermont, on May 22, 1935, youngest daughter of four girls and four boys, of Frank and Mary Miglis.
Her family resided in Center Rutland and Alice attended Center Rutland School. She was graduated from Mount St. Joseph Academy in Rutland in 1953, where her classmates voted her “Most Vivacious,” and then from Albany Business College. Upon graduation she became business manager of Mountain Top Club resort in Chittenden, Vermont, but soon was hired as the bursar at Castleton College, now Vermont State University.
Castleton, an architecturally beautiful New England institution, was made more than merely picturesque when Alice arrived. One of the students wrote in a yearbook message to Alice that she was the best reason for attending college. She charmed all of them.
When her high heels clicked down the marble-tiled administration building hall, a vision in a belted and buttoned cotton shirtwaist halting just above amazing ankles, they stopped one of the older students, an Air Force veteran and Rutland Herald reporter. He stared. He was enchanted. She raced his pulse. She was so beautiful she could have been a live porcelain figurine, with every part exactly where it ought to be. Nobody was surprised when she modeled fashions for the Rutland Herald. Was it love at first sight? Impossible. He had seen her many times before at MSJ, where she was considered an item with the captain of the football team. Back then she hardly noticed the would-be reporter, but in 1961 she married Bob Bennett in St. Peter’s Church in Rutland.
After their first child was born, she became a stay-at-home mom except for stints to train two rounds of successors at Castleton. Alice had handled all financial activities with a pencil and a typewriter for several years and was succeeded in the job by two men and an accounting machine. When they were let go because they couldn’t perform the duties to the satisfaction of the college president, she was called in to break in three more men and two more–elaborate accounting machines. Subsequently she was hired to conduct pre-audits for all the state colleges.
The couple lived on Butterfly Avenue in Rutland until 1965 when Bob landed a job at Pfizer headquarters in New York City. The family moved to the Garden State, and she volunteered at school libraries, served as a teacher of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in Wyckoff, New Jersey, and as a Gray Lady at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey. As the mother of two boys she actively supported their school, soccer and baseball activities. When a daughter arrived, she became a ballet mother, driving thousands of miles to dance schools and performances in Philadelphia, New York City, Vermont and Saratoga Springs, New York, culminating in watching her on the stage with the New York City Ballet while founder George Balanchine looked on.
The family lived in two homes in Wyckoff and Alice spent plenty of time making them beautiful. She was also well known for her prowess at shopping at some of the most expensive stores in New York and New Jersey, Had shopping been an Olympic event, Alice would have worn several gold medals.
After moving to Shelburne in 1977 when Bob was hired at Garden Way Publishing in Charlotte, and upon her children’s completion of high school, Alice joined Burlington neurosurgeon Dr. Nancy Binter as her office manager, where her earnings helped send her three children to the University of Vermont, Georgetown, Albany Law School and the University of Leningrad. She retired in 2004 to become, she said, a full-time grandmother when her grandson was born. Alice is survived by her husband, Robert Wallace Bennett, her children, Robert Scott Bennett of New York City, John Wallace Bennett of Shelburne and Alyssa Mary Bennett Igo, her son-in-law Christopher Igo, grandson Scott Wallace Igo, and granddaughter Alexia Greer Igo, all of Duxbury, Massachusetts. She is also survived by her brother John Miglis of Shelburne. She was predeceased by her parents, her sisters Pauline, Mary and Irene, and brothers George, Frank and William, in whose honor she became a contributor to the Shriners Hospital in Montreal.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Alice M. Bennett.